


Prompt: The Shape of Magic

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [145]
Category: Hellboy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crossover, Crack, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Learning Magic, Post-Hellboy II: The Golden Army, slightly inspired by The Shape of Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 08:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13119951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: “He is a fish. man.” Pietro’s baffled expression has not changed. “I do not... Wanda! He is a fish. man!”Wanda cannot hold in her laughter.“Stop laughing!”





	Prompt: The Shape of Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nanyoky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanyoky/gifts).



> Written for Nanyoky/Nell after a slightly cracky discussion re: The Shape of Water. I hope you like it!

**i.**  
"What...,” Pietro looks completely baffled. “You... and Abe.” He looks to the wall, to the ceiling and back to his sister. _“How_  does that  _work?!”_

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
See, the thing about the BPRD was, ultimately, they helped a lot with things the Avengers couldn’t. They stopped up the gaps when it came to things that might hurt people and had a better grasp of magic than any except  _possibly_  that school in the mountains and _definitely_ the priests and priestesses of Wakanda.

But, apparently, some of them had  _learned_  from both of those, so when some ex-members of the BPRD came forward and said they’d be willing to help Wanda get a handle on her... particular powers without interference from their once-parent organisation, it wasn’t really as though there were a huge number of better options.

So now, in the mornings, they had tea and coffee with a pyromage, a fishman, and a literal antichrist.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
Abe had, perhaps unsurprisingly, been the one to both befriend Wanda, and to teach her- “I have empathetic abilities,” he explained. “Where you  _see_  minds, I can feel them. I suspect this shall make teaching much simpler than with Liz or Red.” 

And it had proven to be so. Abe was, in some ways, rather like Vision. Gentle, quiet, very intelligent. Patient and encouraging and all-round good company except for one thing.

Abe had much more life experience. He made bumbles on occasion, but he did have a very sound understanding of room etiquette.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
“So,” Abe says, rolling some knucklebones from one gloved palm to the other. “Do you think you are ready?”

Wanda offered a smile, held out her hands for the bones. “Best we find out, yes?”

She tossed the bones, she dropped the blood, she dangled her pendant between two fingers and cast the spell.

And the blood and stones mapped the path of Liz and Hellboy in town.

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
“She’s progressing amazingly,” Abe says to Liz and Hellboy when they get back. “I barely explained the principles and she grasped them on the first try! Why, she’s practically a prodigy!”

“Tone it down, Abe,” says Hellboy through smiles. “Anyone would think you had a crush.”

Liz pats the spluttering Abe’s hand. “Ignore him,” she says. “Are you coming to dinner tonight? The kids would love to see you.”

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
Wanda learns magic so quickly Abe starts leaving her with the books. 

“Anyone would think,” he says one evening, “That you had been taught magic from the cradle!”

“Well,” Wanda had said over the top of the current tome she was reading. “They did always like to say Mother had the knack.”

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
“He is a  _fish. man.”_  Pietro’s baffled expression has not changed. “I do not... Wanda! He is a  _fish. man!”_

Wanda cannot hold in her laughter.

“Stop laughing!”

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
Abe does not stay over at the facility often. There are several reasons for this, most importantly that they do not have a suitable tank for him... yet. But sometimes, on odd days, he does, if he thinks Wanda is doing well enough that he’ll pass on his ride home with Liz and Hellboy, or if he and Wanda plan to do a spell that requires midnight or dawn or a particular planetary conjunction.

Sometimes, after such spells, they stumble in exhausted, and Abe collapses into the tank of water they leave in the main room on those days, and Wanda collapses on the sofa next to it.

Usually, Pietro finds her in the space of the two minutes it takes for her to fall asleep and speeds her back to her room and under her blankets, but one night-

 

* * *

 

 **ix.**  
“You were holding hands, Wanda!” he said, passing her a mug of tea. “In your  _sleep!”_

This is not outrage but more... some kind of teasing. It is a thing unexpected and it startled him, so he is teasing to ease his worry.

“So what?” she says, sipping her tea. “I hold hands with you often enough, and have fallen asleep holding Vision’s hand before.”

“Yes but that is-”

Pietro trails off, baffled, startled, confused and concerned, and Wanda cannot help her laugh. She pinches his cheek gently. “Worrywart. It is all right, I promise.”

 

* * *

 

 **x.**  
“How do you-” Abe remains as startled at her quick grasp of magic as ever. “This is faster than anyone could have expected!”

Wanda shrugs, twists scarlet into the pattern of the spell, charges the small circle they have before them, and summons up the spirit of the mouse skeleton in the circle.

“I do not know,” she says. “I just...  _can.”_

Abe smiles, very slightly sadly, and reaches out to gently take her hand, move it over the circle where the reanimated mouse skitters and follows.

“Professor Bruttenholm would have loved to have met you,” he says.

 

* * *

 

 **xi.**  
They do not... they do not kiss, but they do hold hands more often, lean into each other slightly in a way that betrays the ease they have with each other. With palms pressed to palms Abe is allowed ready and easy access to her mind, though he is careful to place his mental feet only on the floor, never flying above as Wanda does, or Pietro. Wanda keeps a gentle watch on Abe’s soft bubble of a mind, all it’s myriad aquatic ecosystem parts ever active.

It is peaceful and calming, and so some days Wanda will lean over, and press a kiss to his cheek.

 

* * *

 

 **xii.**  
“Fish! Man!”

Pietro, it seems, cannot quite get over the  _fish_  part.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


End file.
